I am looking for a real-life (as in brick and mortar, not online, with a door and a sign and everything) place that professionally administers legitimate IQ tests (Stanford-Binet or equivalent) to adults and gives one an IQ score as a numeric result on the standard scale (you know median: 100 standard deviation: 15 or whatever it is). I’m willing to pay a fee but preferrably under $60 or so. Oh and it has to be within reasonable speed one hour driving distance of Santa Clara, CA.
I guess technically this is a general question, but I am somewhat ashamed to post that there since I feel that my failed attempts to find it are not due to the information being hidden, but rather due to my google-fu being very weak and shameful. Perhaps such a thing is not done anymore, or ever for that matter. However, I am rather stubborn and there are simply some things that I just need to know. You know?
That reminds me, how do I find out how tall I am and have it officially recorded on some verifiable document?
You know that moment right after you post, when you read what you just posted, and that makes you sober enough to realize that you should not post whilst under the influence, nor is there an undo button. :smack:
Can we just pretend I asked that same question but in a more respectable fashion?
On the bright side, I am quite pleased with how incredibly coherent that was, but I’ll re-read it in the morning none-the-less to make sure it’s not just the gin goggles talking.
School psychologists and clinical psychologists can give them but they generally cost way more than $60. They have to be professionally administered individually by someone with lots of training. It takes several hours and generally costs several hundred dollars. I believe mine was $300 back in the 80’s.
Your only hope is to contact psychology grad schools and offer to be a test case for grad students. School psychologists generally have to give lots of them as part of training and may be willing to do it for free if they need volunteers.
Hm, my insurance does cover random psychiatric visits with no questions asked, so perhaps I could slide that in somehow. So there are no IQ tests done by testing conglomerates like Prometric and such?
There are a whole bunch of tests that give a score that correlates very highly with traditional IQ test scores. If you know your SAT or GRE scores, there are conversion charts that will give you a really good idea about what your IQ is. That is where the idea of a (G)eneral Factor of intelligence comes from. All well-designed tests of that type correlate very highly with one another.
The traditional IQ tests however, measure some things like spatial capability that are only touched on in some of the other tests. They are individually given and take hours and require an administrator with lots of training to be considered a proper test.
There are some IQ tests that you can take online and the good ones (that you may have to pay for) will give you a really good idea of what your traditional IQ score is if you just want it for your own benefit.
I was discussing IQ tests with a psychologist friend of mine, and he agreed that a pencil-and-paper test is not a real IQ test. He also mentioned that a real one would cost around $300. He mentioned the same thing Shag said:
But if you want a pencil-and-paper test, you might consider the test administered by Mensa.
This site says that you can get a “pre-test” to take at home just to get a very rough idea, and then you can attend an administered test, which is within your price range.
(I did this about 20 years ago. It was fun to take the tests and see what my number was, but actually joining Mensa was somewhat pointless.)
I’m not sure about everyone else, but I bombed the SAT test (870 combined) but was always in gifted programs and tested out about a 135 on an IQ test. I was always in the 90+ percentile on any standard test. I would love to see my SAT score some how work out to how smart I am/was.
Can I ask why you want that info? Combined with you wanting to record your height seems a tad unusual. BTW, in Florida, your height is on your driver license, however, I don’t ever recall them actually measuring me, I think I just told them (Since I say I am 5’8" but am actually 5’7 3/4")
I do not want to use the SAT/GRE conversion because, while extremely proficient in English, it is not my first language, and as such, I feel I would’ve done better on the SAT/GRE has it been. Those test are weighted more towards linguistic intuition and vocabulary than IQ tests.
That is true and a valid concern that could skew the results. If you wonder why a real IQ test is so expensive, it is because it isn’t like a pencil and paper standardized test. The administrator gives much of the test orally and there are tools like shaped and colored blocks that you have to form into certain designs. The administrator also has to interpret the quality of the answers and make decisions based on borderline ones. I took some pyschometrics classes in undergrad and grad school and I learned to administer them as a student but not for real. There is a lot involved.
I bombed grades all through school and college but always did well on standardized tests, like the SAT.
Basically height and IQ are the most commonly asked questions I get that I do not have a good answer for. My drivers license says 5’10", but that was a guesstimate, and I know I was 5’9" when I was 15 because that’s what it says on my medical records, but my height has not been measured since, and I know I’ve grown.
The reason I want the IQ test to be official is if it qualifies me for Mensa, I’d love to join, and I don’t want to take their test in addition. I’m currently considering writing a book about self-realization and discovery and mensa members would provide a very valueable research resource in that department - even if they turn out to be a bunch of boring puzzle-crunchers. Another reason is that I argue relentlessly about IQ testing in general and it is somewhat hypocritical of me not to have taken at least one official test.
Oh, and if you’re looking for a fun reason, I want to prove correlation of height and IQ scores with a sample size of one
I always liked my men like I like my dogs, big and dumb.
j/k, but I do tend to believe that big dogs and big men have less to prove than their more diminutive counterparts.
You could always apply to mensa under a (taller) alias. I’ve often thought about it, but the anti-mensa backlash is fairly common. Although I have no problem with backlashes about my atheism, geekiness, chattiness and being the NRA.
Holding pencil over your head, make a scratch mark on the wall parallel to the top of your head. (If you do not have arms, ask a trusted friend to do this for you.)
Take a tape measure and measure the distance from the floor to the scratch mark.
I’ve done that a couple of times and I always get different results. And hey, just because the height measuring device at the doctors office slammed me in the head a couple of times as a kid, doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to know my IQ, because if it’s under 75 I’m definitely voting twice next election!
